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Utah Opioid Task Force Presents on Resources Helping Combat the Opioid Crisis

March 6, 2020

This week, the Utah Opioid Task Force hosted a Lunch & Learn featuring four TED Talk-style presentations on the types of community-based information and education seminars that the Task Force intends to develop and deliver in 2020.

Listen to the presentations below:

Chief Tom Ross with the Bountiful Police Department presented on the pilot project Davis County Receiving Center which offers a chance at recovery rather than jail time. The Receiving Center opened in December 2019. Read more here.

Dr. Jennifer Plumb with Utah Naloxone presented on the importance of having a Naloxone kit if you or someone you know is struggling with addiction. Naloxone saves lives by reversing an opioid overdose and giving first responders time to arrive. Plumb demonstrated the easy-to-use kit and discussed how to recognize an overdose. For more information, go here.

Anna Fondario with the Utah Department of Health presented on resources provided by the Department, their current efforts to combat the opioid crisis, and the Department of Health Data Dashboard, which provides an interactive, visual presentation of health data in Utah with the intent to provide actionable health-related data. Check out the Dashboard here and check out Stop the Opidemic, a campaign that can help you find resources and information on the opioid epidemic in Utah.  

Evan Done with Utah Support Advocates for Recover Awareness (USARA) discussed their peer-based recovery support system for those struggling with an opioid addiction. Their services focus on the reality of long-term recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs for individuals and their families in Utah. For more information go here.

Watch the presentations below:

AG Reyes leads White House discussion, highlights Utah solutions at Opioids Conference

Today, Attorney General Sean D. Reyes helped lead a discussion with leaders from over forty federal, state, local, and tribal organizations, on the value of partnerships and other tools in combating the opioid crisis in America. You can read the official media release here.  Shout out to the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs staff for hosting a very informative, classy, consequential event.

Let’s save some lives.   

LIVE STREAM

Event begins at the 29-minute mark.

Here is the breakdown of comments made in the opening forum (the smaller breakout sessions afterward were not live-streamed).  One of the highlights of the discussion – in our humble opinion – was when AG Reyes highlighted the powerful Utah partnerships that make fighting the opioids crisis a winnable effort. 

Welcome and Introduction from Doug Hoelscher
Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to the President of the United States
Robert Wilkie, Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Panel Discussion Introduction by Katie Talento
Sean Reyes, Utah Attorney General
Jim Carroll, Deputy Director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)
Anne Hazlett, Assistant Secretary for Rural Development, United States Department of Agriculture
Admiral Brett Giroir, Assistant Secretary for Health, Health and Human Services
Sean Reyes, Utah Attorney General, Follow-up comments
Admiral Brett Giroir, Assistant Secretary for Health, Follow-up comments

If you would like to get involved in the fight to free your family and community from the opioid epidemic, please contact our office


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In related news, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 6, the Support for Patients and Communities Act while we were meeting today. You can read up on the bill here. Another step in the right direction.

We can win this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AG Reyes Updates White House Staff on Opioid Epidemic

President Trump declares opioid epidemic a national public health emergency

SALT LAKE CITY  October 26, 2017 – The Office of the Utah Attorney General (OAG) announced today that Attorney General Sean Reyes met with White House officials and cabinet members to discuss efforts to combat the opioid epidemic killing Americans. President Donald Trump declared the opioid epidemic a national public health emergency, while a White House spokesman suggested that Congress allocate $45 billion for the fight against opioids. The number of drug overdoses in 2016 is expected to exceed 64,000 Americans, according to the White House. Utah has the 7th highest drug overdose rate in the nation.

“Over the last decade we have seen have seen the types of drugs sold on our streets become more potent and deadly,” said Attorney General Reyes.  “Today, what begins as a legitimate prescription for pain all too often becomes an addiction, leading users to steal additional opioids from the medicine cabinets of family. Worse, it can lead addicts to fill their craving with illicit black tar heroin or overdose and death. This epidemic—striking at our homes, our families, and our communities—is why we are taking aggressive action against drug traffickers.”

The White House’s declaration of the opioid epidemic as a public health emergency allows the government to redirect resources in various ways and to expand access to medical services in rural areas.

“This is a banner day,” Reyes said in an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune after leaving the White House. “No matter whether you’re new to this issue or you’ve been like many of us fighting it for a long time, there’s nothing but good news in terms of it making people more aware, asking for more help and giving a broad mandate to federal agencies to make this a priority to open up resources to help us all in our individual states and communities.

“Having now an administrative mandate of presidential priority to push even further a number of initiatives, research, budgeting for this issue — it’s certainly not too late and if we don’t start to take it even more seriously and have more urgency, it’s only going to metastasize.”

Working with legislators, community activists, and medical community, as well as the Drug Enforcement Agency, AG Reyes organized the Utah Opioid Task Force earlier this year to combat the opioid epidemic. The Utah Opioid Task Force is a voluntary task force made up of representatives from partner agencies and organizations across the state. The mission of the Task Force is to take action against opioid abuse through law enforcement, prosecution, proposed legislation, and innovation.

The collaborative process brings together leaders who are alarmed and seeking solutions. Most recently the task force has taken action to fight the opioid epidemic in several ways.

  • Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes co-authored a letter representing a coalition of 37 states and territories urging health insurance companies to examine financial incentives that contribute to the opioid epidemic in Utah.
  • Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes announced that an investigation by a bipartisan coalition of 41 state attorneys general is seeking documents and information from manufacturers and distributors of prescription opioids. This information will enable the attorneys general to evaluate whether these businesses are engaged in unlawful practices in the marketing, sale, and distribution of opioids. 
  • Attorney General Sean Reyes has joined with a bipartisan group of attorneys general from across the country in letters to 15 healthcare companies that provide pharmacy benefit management (PBM) services encouraging the companies to implement programs to mitigate prescription opioid abuse.
  • The Task Force called on to make available naloxone rescue kits, which are used solely as an antidote to reverse an opiate overdose.  Additionally, legislators and medical community members of the task force are collaborating to forward legislation to address various aspects of the opioid epidemic.

Quick facts on the national and local opioid epidemic:

  • 6 Utahns die every week from opioid overdose, or 23 individuals a month
  • 80% of users of hard heroin start with prescription opioids.
  • Drug poisoning deaths have outpaced deaths due to firearms, falls, and motor vehicle crashes in Utah.

According to the White House, “There are several principal factors contributing to the current nationwide heroin crisis: the increased availability of heroin in the U.S. market, including the availability of purer forms of heroin that allow for non-intravenous use; its relatively low price; and some people who use controlled opioid prescription drugs for non-medical purposes transitioning to heroin use.  Heroin use has spread into suburban and rural communities and is growing among most socioeconomic classes, age groups, and races.  Furthermore, the emergence of clandestinely produced fentanyl and other high potency synthetic opioids in the illicit drug market is fueling the high mortality rate and compounding our country’s current opioid crisis.”

 

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